Increase Hard Disk Speed in Windows XP/2003
by Daniel Petri - January 8, 2009

How can I increase my hard disk speed in Windows XP/2003?

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To speed up your hard disk speed we need to configure a special buffer in the computer's memory in order to enable it to better deal with interrupts made from the disk.



This tip is only recommended if you have 256MB RAM or higher.

Follow these steps:

Run SYSEDIT.EXE from the Run command.

Expand the system.ini file window.

Scroll down almost to the end of the file till you find a line called [386enh].

Press Enter to make one blank line, and in that line type

Irq14=4096


Note: This line IS CASE SENSITIVE!!!

Click on the File menu, then choose Save.

Close SYSEDIT and reboot your computer.

Done. Speed improvement will be noticed after the computer reboots.


Update: The most speed improvement is visible with IDE drives, however there are reports that this tweak also does good for SCSI disks. In any case, it won't harm your system, so why not try it yourself and let me know what you find.